Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Judge Dredd]

I believe that we'll see higher quality books come out from smaller studios wanting to fill in a niche left by the "popular" games. Similar to how Paizo filled in the 3.5 niche when 3.5 died to give way to 4th Edition.

It already has. I've heard of a lot of OSR books that are high quality. Some are really cheap or even free. I even have a bunch of physical books from Amazon print on demand that were £3 each. Though I've never played them. A lot of them are meat grinders which is a hard sell.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but it's hard to get people away from the big name games, and when I do I'd prefer to play something that isn't yet another d20 fantasy game.

There’s nothing wrong with being a casual if you’re honest about it. Imo the issue is when someone claims to not be a casual and then they shit everything up like they own the place.

I'll try not to. Even if it was my place, I wouldn't want it shit up.

I think a lot of my casualness has to do with availability. I grew up on Fighting Fantasy books, but actual RPGs were a rarity here. While game and comic shops have sprung up in the last decade, the selection is still limited at least where I live. I still can't buy a physical copy of Savage Worlds without paying through the nose for a US import.

I also never cared for the community side. This thread is a breath of fresh air, the wider RPG community seems more concerned with "that guy" stories and speculating on if this or that book will add class X or change rule Y, only to be unanimously disappointed when they do (or don't), but will buy the books anyway. I don't watch Roll20 and I've not seen much of Stranger Things. ("Remember this from 80s movies!" is not enough to carry a series imo.)

My point is I'm just here for the games, and maybe laugh as these companies destroy themselves chasing a woke crowd that hates their audience. And yet, despite my monumental ignorance, I'm one of the more knowledgeable people about the hobby in my friend group.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I don’t mind the idea of cultural bonuses affecting Intelligence, Charisma, or Wisdom but imo race should affect Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.

I wouldn't mind there being no attribute bonuses if all the races in the setting were just different human ethnicities. If we're talking about a world where humans evolved and then spread through the world naturally. Very, very low-fantasy. Old-school Conan, for example.

But in D&D we're talking about worlds where the races were created by the gods, or imported from other planes of existence, or spawned from eldritch cults' dark rituals or magical experiments by archmages of yore. The races are all made for a purpose: why should the dwarf, whose eardrums were hardened by his creator deity to allow him to delight in the song of the anvils in the Great Forge, and whose eyes were not made to see anything past 30 feet in a deep iron mine; have sharper senses than his kin just because he was raised by celestial elves with +2 Wisdom?

A +2 stat bonus is not very big in game terms because that's just a +1 bonus in a d20 roll, but in terms of lore that +2 Dex is what makes Elves almost supernaturally graceful. The +2 Con is what gives Dwarves their legendary stoutness. The +2 Int is what makes Gnomes so insufferable. The +2 Cha is what makes Tiefling so unsettling. It goes on. You don't just "muh culture" these things away, they're actually culture-defining things, because everybody of that race has those bonuses. Remove those and all you have are humans with pointy ears, short angry humans, really short humans, and humans with horns. And I say this as someone who loves playing humans in D&D: humans are only fun as a contrast to the other races. When everybody is a human, they get boring real quick.

And to think they could have avoided this whole fucking thing just by having changed the term from "race" to "species", because that's an actual biological concept with a well-defined meaning. Although to be fair, the crowd pushing for these changes is very good at ignoring biology already...

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Remove those and all you have are humans with pointy ears, short angry humans, really short humans, and humans with horns. And I say this as someone who loves playing humans in D&D: humans are only fun as a contrast to the other races.

That's how these people play them no matter what they play. I've seen them take very well defined races where the inhuman outlook is extensively talked about and smear "short skinny human with scales and a tail" all over it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

And to think they could have avoided this whole fucking thing just by having changed the term from "race" to "species", because that's an actual biological concept with a well-defined meaning.

It wouldn't work. Mainly because SJWs are incapable of being happy. They'd demand more changes, and more changes, and more changes.

But in my experience, name changes don't stick. Savage Worlds tries to call exploding dice "aces", but it never sicks because people who know the mechanic call it exploding dice, and people who are new absorb that term from the long timers. Not helped by Savage Worlds using playing cards for infinitive, so an ace on initiative is not the same as an ace on a roll.

PathFInder 2 does exactly what you want, and everybody mentally swaps out "ancestry" for "race". I had to look up what the replacement word was for this post, that's how ineffective it is. What's worse, it muddles the rules later, as "background" and "ancestry" have similar enough meanings, whereas "race" and "background" don't.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

To me, it's an unspoken rule - indeed, a rule that simply just goes without even saying - that you don't betray your group in a truly major way or steal their shit.

Along with this, the "defense" of "I'm just playing my character!" thing...

My view is, likewise, that I'm just playing my character. And my character doesn't see the magical "THIS IS A PC, YOU MUST BE FRIENDS" brand on the for head of your character. Your character is not going to get a pass "because he's the party thief, lol", or some shit, when you screw him over. Likewise, "That's just how Bob is, you have to forgive him" holds no water when Squidgibo the KenderHalfling is acting like an autistic child and annoying Ashgar the Dark, necromancer adept.

But we're all playing at the same table, we have to try to get along. Arguably we're all friends (I don't play with randos). So stop being a fucking asshole, and make a character that I don't want to vivisect and raise as a minion.

 

[Corn Flakes]

It wouldn't work. Mainly because SJWs are incapable of being happy. They'd demand more changes, and more changes, and more changes.

But in my experience, name changes don't stick. Savage Worlds tries to call exploding dice "aces", but it never sicks because people who know the mechanic call it exploding dice, and people who are new absorb that term from the long timers. Not helped by Savage Worlds using playing cards for infinitive, so an ace on initiative is not the same as an ace on a roll.

PathFInder 2 does exactly what you want, and everybody mentally swaps out "ancestry" for "race". I had to look up what the replacement word was for this post, that's how ineffective it is. What's worse, it muddles the rules later, as "background" and "ancestry" have similar enough meanings, whereas "race" and "background" don't.

That's not what I meant, though. I said to replace all instances of "race" with "species" in the rules text. I know everybody will just keep saying "race". We all know. Hell, I'll be the first to keep calling it "race".

But the dangerhairs trying to call it "racist" don't get an opening. Because "actually, they're not 'races', they're full-blown species, with their own biological traits unrelated to humanity." Basically, the sci-fi solution. The only sacrifices to be made there are the mutts. No more half-orcs. Fine, replace them with full-blooded orcs. Savage and bestial, as Gygax intended, and a lot more interesting. And no more half-elves. Good riddance, we don't need 'em.

Along with this, the "defense" of "I'm just playing my character!" thing...

My view is, likewise, that I'm just playing my character. And my character doesn't see the magical "THIS IS A PC, YOU MUST BE FRIENDS" brand on the for head of your character. Your character is not going to get a pass "because he's the party thief, lol", or some shit, when you screw him over. Likewise, "That's just how Bob is, you have to forgive him" holds no water when Squidgibo the KenderHalfling is acting like an autistic child and annoying Ashgar the Dark, necromancer adept.

But we're all playing at the same table, we have to try to get along. Arguably we're all friends (I don't play with randos). So stop being a fucking asshole, and make a character that I don't want to vivisect and raise as a minion.

My GM is a very patient guy. Comes with the territory, he's been herding cats for close to 25 years now. The kind of player who goes "I'm just playing my character!" is one of the few things that stretch his patience to the breaking point. As he likes to say (usually shortly before kicking out a moron), being part of a RPG group is being part of a relationship. It's not a romantic relationship, it might not even be a friendship insofar as you don't have to know anything about the other players' lives beyond what snacks they like and what beer to bring. But it's a relationship nonetheless, and healthy, stable relationships are based on compromise. If the player can't compromise their "character" for the sake of not annoying everybody else at the table (including the GM), then they have no business being at the table in the first place.

Zany, silly or backstab-happy characters can be lots of fun to have at the table, but everybody involved has to be cool with it. Want to play a prankster? A character who gets on the other characters' nerves? Sure, talk to the GM, talk to the others. Not every prank needs to be described in detail or roleplayed (just like not every romantic conquest by the bard needs to be roleplayed by the increasingly uncomfortable-looking GM). A lot of it can and should just be left to those "the journey to meet Captain Balros in Darkwater Cove will take a couple of weeks' journey along a well-traveled road. What will you be doing every night when you stop at the inns and travel lodges along the way?" moments. Maybe roll stealth vs perception to see if the Dwarf Paladin notices the stopper on his flask if deepmountain whisky was coated in slippery oil before trying to pull it. That's it. Quick and simple. When the players are at the table and ready to roll dice, whatever happens at the table should be important to the plot or to the characters.

A prankster or a thief (or a womanizer) is defined just as much by what they do off-camera as they do on-camera, so to speak.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

A prankster or a thief (or a womanizer) is defined just as much by what they do off-camera as they do on-camera, so to speak.

The ones that really annoy me aren't the ones that just backstab the characters. It's the ones that backstab the group.

Sane Player Character: "Okay, we just snuck into the dragon's lair. He's asleep. The thief can start picking the locks on the princess' shackles, while..."

This is your brain on Kender: "I go up to the dragon and fart in his face! Teehee!"

 

[BlazikenLover]

I’m still salty that the love cleric was not only not brought to Tasha’s, but was memoryholed out of existance and replaced with a shitty Unity Cleric. Not because it was overpowered, but because charm spells are literally date rape, apparently.

Wasn't love cleric made by mearls? If so the real reason for its shitcaning was that, they really wanted to remove any mention to mearls going forward, so everything that was made by him and a work in progress was quietly removed. It is why we got the shitty psionic classes we got.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

That's basically what happened with Pathfinder when they introduced the Shifters class in Ultimate Wilderness. The class was useless Most of the book wasn't really worth using except for the archtypes, and the information on familiars. Shortly after that we got Pathfinder 2nd Edition that long time fans hate yet the people who watch youtube celebs play RPG's love.

While some people out there may think E-Celebs could ruin RPG's going forward, I believe that we'll see higher quality books come out from smaller studios wanting to fill in a niche left by the "popular" games. Similar to how Paizo filled in the 3.5 niche when 3.5 died to give way to 4th Edition.

One of my groups is half grognards/groglets, half zoomers that unironically love CR and 5E. The one point we all converge and agree on is fuck PF2E. It's like they took the worst mistakes of 5E and married them to the mistakes of 3.5E they had left in the dust for PF1E.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

It already has. I've heard of a lot of OSR books that are high quality. Some are really cheap or even free. I even have a bunch of physical books from Amazon print on demand that were £3 each. Though I've never played them. A lot of them are meat grinders which is a hard sell.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but it's hard to get people away from the big name games, and when I do I'd prefer to play something that isn't yet another d20 fantasy game.

Decent rule sets done doesn't mean "high quality" I mean games like The Dark Eye which has been around for over a decade but only now setting translations, Any 2d20 games. W.OIN, LexOccullum, Cortex based games, newer RuneQuest books. Majority of players out there are visual based players. If there isn't any good artwork a lot of players will avoid the game. Its why so many third party d20 books for D&D and Pathfinder books were/ are avoided. Despite having great rules to use, they're avoided because there's no artwork.

 

[Seven Devil Wolf]

That's basically what happened with Pathfinder when they introduced the Shifters class in Ultimate Wilderness. The class was useless Most of the book wasn't really worth using except for the archtypes, and the information on familiars. Shortly after that we got Pathfinder 2nd Edition that long time fans hate yet the people who watch youtube celebs play RPG's love.

While some people out there may think E-Celebs could ruin RPG's going forward, I believe that we'll see higher quality books come out from smaller studios wanting to fill in a niche left by the "popular" games. Similar to how Paizo filled in the 3.5 niche when 3.5 died to give way to 4th Edition.

I'm on a bit more of a doomer bent, with this one. For context, I started with 3.5 because it was the only groups I could find as a Lil Babby. Even at the point I was playing, with my wide-eyed, D&D optimism, I was sick of OGL spin offs. Everything was a bad OGL cash grab. Farscape d20. Game of Thrones d20. Wizards began engaging in even more scummy tactics - they had a fondness for sneakily buying up other properties, renaming them, and then providing multiple statlines.

Swashbuckler Adventures (I think was the name) was their attempt to nip 7th Sea in the bud, which somewhat worked. Sure, it provided stats for the d20 and RnK rulesets, but what were you more likely to find, a game of 7th Sea, or 'Why don't we just run a pirate/swashbuckling adventure in D&D using these rules?' via Lingua Franca. Same with Oriental Adventures, which was Wizard's attempt to sneak into the L5R market.

Looking back, while I wasn't a huge fan of 4e (I preferred it to 3.5, but I'm not a fan of D&D), one of the best things which came out of it was the explosion of non-d20 games. It was through that I discovered Savage Worlds and GURPS, Exalted, Weapons of the Gods/Legends of the Wulin, Fate.

But this is either going to get much worse before it gets better, or gaming will just be changed or very strongly divided. With the rise of eCelebs like Critical Role, the stranglehold D&D already had is just going to get worse, and this isn't just limited to D&D.

Currently, the most popular games on my Discords and Roll20 are PbtA in general, Lancer (4e base, written by a far left commie who's intentionally baked the mechanics heavily into the setting to make it -very- hard to play outside of it without gutting the whole system), D&D 5e and Call of Cthulhu 7e. While I get CoC is popular on it's own, I wondered why people were so big on it, like when I saw on Reddit that Monsterhearts was hugely popular out of no-where. To my lack of surprise, Monsterhearts and Call of Cthulhu were both played on Critical Role. To the point just a single episode on Critical Role -completely backlogged the developers warehouses with orders overnight-.

At it's core, the two big issues I see is that 5e is going to be 3.5 on steriods. It's already happened with a lot of games. Star Wars 5e, a fanhack, is more popular than FFG Star Wars. The One Ring (which is actually getting a 2e, which is nice) was cancelled to make a 5e adaptation, because people just wouldn't play it otherwise. This is most likely going to make up the normie, medium crunch groups.

But on the other hand, PbtA has become the shitty, SJW OGL of gaming. Every single game you find is generally the same premise, with the descriptions changed 'When you want to go aggro' becomes 'When you want to do a cringeworthy assault that leaves your enemies in the dust...') but is also picked up by the mainstream Twitter circle jerks for self-promotion. I've seen OSR making little footnotes, but even then, the few I see which really get pushed are immensely ruleslite (Mork Borg) which are picked up by mainstream media because 'Swedish roleplaying game'.

Even the games which are pretty good (Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World I'm not a fan of, but it's kinda' cute design-wise) are not the issue themselves, but these major OGLs are now the gatekeepers to gaming. Blades in the Dark never touched the 'muh gender' stuff directly, or ever mentioned it, but you won't find a single Forged in the Dark game (Scum and Villainy, which I'm pretty sure is written by a troon), Girl by Moonlight (multiple games about being magical girls. Based around 'who you are, what you believe and the power of relationships and community against an oppress society) which doesn't contain this stuff to the hilt.

Twitter is how these things are going to advertise. These are then picked up by CritRoles, which have to toe the line to not get removed, which then become the advertisement, while other indie games will get left in the dirt. Writing a Kickstarter game about troons in PbtA fighting penguins will not only be signal boosted within the community (as they all fund each other), but if you're lucky, picked up by Twitter and pushed further and with the low effort artwork needed? All you need is some basic writing, some rules made by copy-pasting OGL and you're sorted.

Even if CoC has resisted something like this till now, a large influx of people into the hobby are going to come from the same circles. And after years of being 'D&Ds less popular cousin', you think developers like that are gonna ignore the ability for a 2hr Youtube video by a bunch of voice actors to single-handedly increase their sales more than x5 what they've sold in the last ten years, when all they have to do is write 'Well, Lovecraft is a racist and Eldritch Horror is for all genders!' at the front of the book?

/end grumpy sperg ramble.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Starting out in the mid 1980's is probably why I'm more optimistic about tabletop gaming. Religion, the news, and Republicans couldn't destroy it, the Left can't destroy it now>. It's also hard for the Left to change Call of Cthulhu, It's more than just Lovecraft as a single writer. Many more writers added their own stuff to the mythos. There's about fifty that I know of. There's probably a lot more than that. Some of them are even hardcore Democrats and some of those could be seen as having TDR. Stephen King for instance can't shut up about politics.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Starting out in the mid 1980's is probably why I'm more optimistic about tabletop gaming. Religion< the news< and Republicans couldn't destroy it< the Left can't destroy it now>.

Besides, the books are still out there. If I wanted and had a group for it, I could play AD&D right now. Even if there's no new content by the big publishing houses, the old content doesn't suddenly go away. Even before The Trove, a good torrent search could net you huge dumps of PDFs to flip through. Between AD&D and 3.5e, there are literally hundreds of premade adventures to take inspiration for and adapt to 5e. So even if the worst happens, all we gotta do is just batten down the hatches, gatekeep as hard as we can, and weather the storm.

It's also hard for the Left to change Call of Cthulhu, It's more than just Lovecraft as a single writer. Many more writers added their own stuff to the mythos. There's about fifty that I know of. There's probably a lot more than that. Some of them are even hardcore Democrats and some of those could be seen as having TDR. Stephen King for instance can't shut up about politics.

Well, they certainly tried. What was the name of that series, again? Lovecraft Country? Where the real cosmic horror was racism?

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Besides, the books are still out there. If I wanted and had a group for it, I could play AD&D right now. Even if there's no new content by the big publishing houses, the old content doesn't suddenly go away. Even before The Trove, a good torrent search could net you huge dumps of PDFs to flip through. Between AD&D and 3.5e, there are literally hundreds of premade adventures to take inspiration for and adapt to 5e. So even if the worst happens, all we gotta do is just batten down the hatches, gatekeep as hard as we can, and weather the storm.


Well, they certainly tried. What was the name of that series, again? Lovecraft Country? Where the real cosmic horror was racism?

My group still plays AD&D after we go back together a year ago.

Yes, even New York times dunked on it by saying it was exploiting the past. The review was I believe written by a woman too.
If you keep on living the past you cannot move forward into the future. Such people should just be forgotten.

 

[Corn Flakes]

If you keep on living the past you cannot move forward into the future. Such people should just be forgotten.

And yet we're talking about holding on to past products and IPs while we weather the shitstorm. How's that for irony?

I agree with you, of course. Not every future is a good one. If I don't like where the bus is going, I'm going to hop out the first stop I get and wait for a new one. But it's still funny.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

And yet we're talking about holding on to past products and IPs while we weather the shitstorm. How's that for irony?

I agree with you, of course. Not every future is a good one. If I don't like where the bus is going, I'm going to hop out the first stop I get and wait for a new one. But it's still funny.

Ones a book/ game, another is social construct.

 

[Fictional Character]

Besides, the books are still out there. If I wanted and had a group for it, I could play AD&D right now. Even if there's no new content by the big publishing houses, the old content doesn't suddenly go away. Even before The Trove, a good torrent search could net you huge dumps of PDFs to flip through. Between AD&D and 3.5e, there are literally hundreds of premade adventures to take inspiration for and adapt to 5e. So even if the worst happens, all we gotta do is just batten down the hatches, gatekeep as hard as we can, and weather the storm.

The problem is finding a group that's willing to play something other than the newest D&D or PbTA shit. Even before corona, it was impossible for me to find irl games of anything else. There's still online games, but it's hard to find a time that works for people in five time zones on three continents.

Well, they certainly tried. What was the name of that series, again? Lovecraft Country? Where the real cosmic horror was the racism?

It worked a little. I needed to look up Lovecraft's poem On Creation recently and Google helpfully prioritized search results that were articles of people learning about it in Lovecraft Country and fainting from horror instead of the actual poem.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

The problem is finding a group that's willing to play something other than the newest D&D or PbTA shit. Even before corona, it was impossible for me to find irl games of anything else. There's still online games, but it's hard to find a time that works for people in five time zones on three continents.


It worked a little. I needed to look up Lovecraft's poem On Creation recently and Google helpfully prioritized search results that were articles of people learning about it in Lovecraft Country and fainting from horror instead of the actual poem.

I originally thought that too until I found this one nerd site that was posting for groups for games like Elite Dangerous RPG. There was like five different groups looking for people. Meetup was good sometimes depending on who was running the page for your area. Here, we had one asshole who wanted people to pay $5 a month to part of the group. The group page went from over 400 people down to less than 40. The guy even threated to call the police on me because I said he was going to help destroy gaming in the area like the group he was with before tried. He considered that harassment. Told him to go ahead because I was going to proven right, and I was. The two running it now last I checked are doing a good job.

By the way, just a heads up. SearX is still a thing so you don't have to use Google and it's bullshit search engine results.

 

[Corn Flakes]

The problem is finding a group that's willing to play something other than the newest D&D or PbTA shit. Even before corona, it was impossible for me to find irl games of anything else. There's still online games, but it's hard to find a time that works for people in five time zones on three continents.

I'm not gonna lie, this reminds me of the old days of trying to few new people and new groups. It sucked back then and it sucks now, but at least with the internet there's a good chance you'll find enough people whose sperging is agreeable.

By the way, I wasn't kidding when I talked about porting old adventures to new systems. Back in 2018 our GM had us going through an updated version of Scourge of the Slave Lords. The younger guys had no idea, and I only recognized it because of the labyrinth on part three looked familiar. It was a blast either way, real old-school stuff. I asked him how hard it had been to get everything converted, and apparently it wasn't that hard (at least to him, his levels of autism are definitely higher than mine). It was mostly searching and replacing old terms with new ones, recalculating checks/saves, and re-statting NPCs and enemies. The setting itself, the locations, the conflict and the plotline? All ported cleanly through with minimum changes required.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

I'm not gonna lie, this reminds me of the old days of trying to few new people and new groups. It sucked back then and it sucks now, but at least with the internet there's a good chance you'll find enough people whose sperging is agreeable.

I just started playing games on roll20 and it really reminds me of years ago where you really only found games with old friends or your local game store. You usually start out with some pick up game with a random group and it's clear by the second session who you want to play with and who you don't. Those games tend to collapse on the weight of their own retards pretty quick, which is when you message the people you like and just start a game on your own.